I've been very happy that since my last report of work frustrations, things have improved. The "pushing and cajoling" part of my project with Keith has now been taken over by the managers closer to the users. So, it now feels like we're all cooperating on moving the project to company-wide use, instead of feeling like I had to push a cantaloupe down people's throat. In fact, Keith and I were at the corporate office yesterday, and things seem to be really progressing. Not only has Keith completed work on 20 to 25 issues or feature requests since the beginning of last week, but the people who are supposed to be using it are actually using it. Brilliant.
But, of course there are frustrations elsewhere. If it wasn't frustrating, we wouldn't call it "work", would we?
The top of my "list" this week is Apple Computer. One issue is that our project is having trouble because the data we get from Apple is severely broken and they seem to never respond to our bug reports and requests for assistance. But, that's expected. The more frustrating issue has to do with their software.
I'm working right now on setting up an internal Jabber chat (instant messaging) server for our company. Ostensibly, we're setting this up to make it easier for our staff to find each other for online chat and to do it more securely. But, it also means that the "other shoe will drop" and, once we have our own chat server, access to outside chat services (AOL Instant Messenger, ICQ, etc) will be cut off. I can totally understand this because many of our employees really abuse Internet chat and spend half their time chatting with people when they're (supposedly) working. But, no matter how much I can understand it, it won't be popular. But that's a different issue.
The gripe with Apple is that their built-in chat client, iChat, seems to have a built in way to look up people's chat address from an address book. Since we already have a networked address book, I figured I could add the chat addresses there and have iChat find them automatically. However, Apple has never documented how to do that, which is one mark against them. The bigger mark against them is that, once I went to the work of finding and reading LDAP schemas, hacking a custom directory server to figure out what iChat was doing, and poring over network dumps, I discovered that Apple probably didn't document it because it's broken. They ask the address book for "IMHandle" info, but publish "apple-imhandle" info (so it doesn't match) and (maybe due to that), no matter how you give the info to iChat in the address book, it can never use it. It seems that they wrote the software, determined that it was broken, then decided to simply not talk about it instead of fixing it. When you love Apple computers as much as I do, this kind of thing is a bit surprising and frustrating.
Anyhow, I should also note that both the improvement in the first work problem and the fact that Apple is on my good side due to a $53.20 stock price (525% profit for me!), my overall outlook is way ahead compared to a few weeks ago.
Now, I'm off to the Oregon Coast for the weekend. Hope everyone has a good one.
Would love to be there but I have plans tonight. I'll try to catch the next one.
Wednesdays are rough for me this term- I have a early-ish class on Thursday and I'm one of those people who actually attends every class meeting in a timely manner.
Wish I could have been there to see you and those bloggers I've yet to meet... maybe next time
p.s. I finally got the long awaited blog makeover! YAY!
I hang my head in shame for not being able to make it. Since when do they pile on the homework in the first week!?!?! I'm drowning and I've got 9 weeks to go. Blah!!
Still, it's no excuse. And I'm sorry.
Sorry guys I missed all at track town on the last meet up. News here is I'm going through a new career change, well you can call it that, after spending so many years in restuarant in various crankies, than actually decide you need a change for a change - I mean a REAL CHANGE! Yikes, did I say that all in one breath?
Think so.
I've noticed that "MY COFFEE" place on West 11th as well, haven't been there yet, but I heard some nice things about that place and the coffee as well. The wi-fi, heck, that's gotta get Micheal's ego for the laptop to work to check out everyone's blog at meetings! Minus the bleachers at track town and the owesome duck spirit in season.
Well, its close to home, located on the bike path, easy on Mike's gas pedal, crunch on blu's from campus and of course its on the bus route too. Hmm, either pizza or coffee with free wi-fi, take your pick, I'll come AND yes, I SAID I'll come... Trust me!